You dont need a Fab ( or fap if you prefer ) plant to fix BIOS hacks, you need only decompile the BIOS, and reverse the hack.
Since the author of the article does not really understand the 'Reflections on trusting trust' very well,
he just needs to consider that: Hardware is really just a faster version of software, i.e. anything you do in logic hardware you can simulate in software, so, the hardware is really running a program. You should be wary of rogue chips, that have backdoors built in! They could trigger without the BIOS!However, your going to find this out pretty fast, with a packet sniffer, and rogue hardware sending out encrypted packets.
and then some pesky Linux kernel hacker is going to find out, publish your hardware prefix, and all your cards are belong to us!
But of course, the hardware could pick a MAC address hardware prefix at random, but that would be traceable too!
It all sounds so cool and theoritical, but BIOS/Silicon guys in Taiwan are so busy trying just to get the damn device out the door, relitivly bug free, they dont have time to add spyware to the BIOS/Silicon, so you are going to get a hacked chop job done by some failure of a chinese postal employee? Someone is going to find out, really, they will spot the network traffic, and then your whole house of cards is going south, and then the word is going to get out, and they are going to find the people responsible and TP their house!
Spam is a tolerable social evil, as well as viruses/spyware. The intelligentsia keep them well at bay, but a BIOS/Silicon backdoor? Your going to need a custon FAB place to do it, and somehow ... you are going to get caught, either on the front end, ( where was it fabbed ) or on the back end ( where the backdoor crap collects ). Didnt they just take down some russian guy? Dont do the crime if you can do the time!
I have no fear....( and 40 years of experience )( p.s. I read the reflections paper while I was looking over the GNU C Compiler ... 1.0 circa 1987 )
